


with silver bells and cockle shells

by WindyRein



Series: How does your garden grow? [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Execution, F/M, Gammas, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Massive abuse of italics...like seriously it's worse than ever before, Mention of Cannibalism, Non-Human Mama Stilinski, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Post Season 2 AU, Something like reincarnation, run-on sentences of doom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindyRein/pseuds/WindyRein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had started with a strange kind of intuition. Or maybe it had started with a rough voice whispering in the dark and sharing guarded and cherished memories. Hell, maybe it had started with stories about faeries and changelings and magic flowing in the surrounding world, stories about how you can use that magic for anything if you just remember how.</p><p>(and Stiles' hands on Derek's cheeks, his eyes burning with the power given)</p>
            </blockquote>





	with silver bells and cockle shells

**Author's Note:**

> So, I took a steel baseball bat and _beat_ this dream sequence to [submission](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1DKy1uqGpE).
> 
> Then of course because I just had to promise myself blood and gore and battles in this one, I had to conquer the alpha pack scene and just... [*beats head](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRRLQp0YDBk) [against a wall*](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1QUZzeZoPQ) *singsongs “and I still don’t like it”*
> 
> But that aside *flails* OHMYGOD, YOU GUYS!!! all the kudos and the comments and the hits and the kudos and *flails* you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve almost hit myself in the face with my flailing and one of these days Imma pass out when I find my favourite writers on ao3 kudoing my shit...again. I think the last time I hit that particular pitch was when [Make A Beast Out of You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/440475/chapters/751052) updated o.O Also, not that nice when your throat’s practically torn open after a weekend at a rock festival... -.-
> 
> And don’t ask about the Deaton bit, I’ve absolutely no bloody idea where that came from.
> 
> Also, holy shit what is this blasphemy?! Is that actual, honest to god dialogue in there? o.O

It had started with a strange kind of intuition, one that seemed to prod and poke at me when I was going in the wrong direction and bother me until I was on the right track. Or maybe it had started with a rough voice whispering in the dark and sharing guarded and cherished memories.

Hell, maybe it had started with stories about faeries and changelings and magic flowing in the surrounding world, stories about how you can use that magic for anything if you just remember how. I’d asked why at five and gotten only tinkling laughter and _because that’s how it is, little one_ as an answer. I asked again at ten and got a pondering hum and _because wild magic doesn’t answer to anyone but to those that know it, I suppose_. I would’ve asked again after circles made of ash and accidental brushfires but she was gone by then and maybe she wouldn’t have known any better.

***

 _There are no wolves in California_ , he’s smiling but then a memory hits him, a line in the bestiary about a legend of weres who could change completely into their animal counterparts and he corrects himself _well, not normal wolves at least_. His worry is reflected in Derek’s eyes.

He doesn’t sleep that night or the next one, too focused on researching every possibility and how to harm them if need be. His research binge came to an end when Derek ordered him to sleep before he crashed his Jeep on the way to school.

***

_Everything was all soft edges and warm colours and he smiled. He was...happy, for once in his life. His best friend was marrying the girl of his dreams and even if it might have stung a little, he was happy when his friend was happy and that was what was important._

_Time blurred and suddenly years had gone by and he was holding a precious little baby boy with his mother’s eyes and his father’s smile and his heart was breaking a little inside but he was godfather and that made him burst with pride._

_Hours stretched and days swam by and he was standing dry-eyed by his friend’s coffin trying to tell all these people who had barely known him what a kind person he had been during his life. His godson’s face streaked with tears, his mother’s eyes clouded with shock even when she was clutching the boy to her side a little too tightly and - -_

_He remembers waking up like it was the first time since he had been born and he was laughing and laughing and laughing and around him the church was on fire and around him people were huddling away from the fire and yet there was a five feet radius around him at any given time._

_He survived, not for long, but he survived. Survived that fire, didn’t survive the madness that followed, remembers a woman with cold, mocking eyes at his execution, remembers another with kind, understanding eyes with endlessendless sadness in them and rope and - -_

***

The first time she speaks with him, not just at him, her blonde hair’s in a haphazard braid and she tells him about what he is, what he should expect. She tells him about her most brutal memories _(maybe trying to soften any shock or horror he might experience in finding out)_ but balances those out with stories about laughter and contentment if not always happiness. She tells him with a self-deprecating smile that her relationship with Peter has always been bipolar at best and that he might not have such awful memories. Later he wonders if she knew about the fire decades earlier. _(she hadn’t been there at the end)_

She never looks at him directly, her blue eyes scanning the trees and he wonders if this is because of something that happened in this life or some previous one. _(he’s still finding it hard to believe but...there’s that nagging insistence again)_

***

Stiles thought he might be sick _(it’s not like it’s the first time, every night a new reason)_ but he knows this isn’t that bad, knows this isn’t even close to how it was when he was living it. But still… God, all that blood and the malicious laughter and jeering of the villagers and _he was surrounded by his burning home and adopted family, skin boiling off, screams unheard from an ashen throat and_ he gulps air in and runs for the bathroom to gag up everything he could. He doesn’t understand how Mary can live with this all the time, without ever having the bliss of ignorance, the peace of forgetting.

***

“It never stops, does it?”

The trees surrounding them sway and hum quietly in a gentle breeze and she hums the same tune for a moment before answering.

“We come in pairs, Stiles. We with our hearts drenched in wild knowledge and singing of the moon no matter what and they…well, they are the calm in the centre of chaos, the roots of the tree reaching and yearning for the sky. It’s balance, cub. Simple as that.”

She pauses, just for a moment, to listen to the wind’s laughter.

“They carry Father Earth’s calm and we are Mother Moon’s mad children. We are whatever they need us to be. We are, we will always be and they will hurt us and love us and shun us and never understand that ache in their chest, not until they are like us in some way. It’s like an ouroboros, really, it never stops and...I couldn’t live with that, not understanding.”

“But why?”

Mary could see the desperation in the boy’s eyes, could understand that need to know. Mother knows she’d screamed it to the skies enough times. None of it meant she’d answer, not in full and maybe not right.

“Because,” she stopped and for a moment wondered if that pinch in her gut was something like regret for telling him, “because if we kill them, ignore them, _run_ from them, the madness takes over and things like Krakatoa and the disappearance of Atlantis happen.”

She thought he might have been shocked into silence or maybe just thinking it over. “Then again,” there was a bitter edge to her smile and possibly even a cruel undertone to her words, “sometimes I wonder if I already haven’t given in.”

He thinks she answered obtusely _(and to the wrong question)_ on purpose.

***

There’s a glade in the woods. There and not there. There and everywhere. Mary calls it the Well of Memory. Stiles calls it the Spring of Eternal Life. They’re both right in their own way. _(even when it’s actually a small stream running through a clearing filled with life lived)_

There was a slowly healing cut _(it was going to scar, there was nothing anyone could do)_ to the side of Stiles’ left eye and he was thinking. Thinking about all he could know. Thinking about magic and monsters and power running through his veins. Thinking about dreams and Death on a word. No matter what, though, his thoughts kept circling back to that hopeless, helpless, almost panicked look in Derek’s eyes. He thinks about everything he could’ve done against the kanima’s Master if he’d known. He thinks about flashes of memory and half-remembered knowledge, and he wonders if he could live with all of that squeezed in ‘till the world’s end.

Behind this, under that, in his subconscious, there was a voice whispering about pack wars and half-remembered enemies. A voice scoffing at the _children_ the alpha pack really were, how they didn’t understand power, how he could rip them apart and spread their intestines in the branches _(not anymore, not now, not with his current power)_.

***

The first time Deaton sees them together; he takes a step back and averts his eyes in a way Stiles knows is completely wolf even if the vet isn’t. Later when Mary’s on the phone arguing with Peter about belladonna berries and leaves and their potential in their particular alpha situation, Deaton tells him she’s probably the first one to stop forgetting and that rumour is, she used a decade to build up power for her ritual and the power broke or twisted something in her, that the madness is always closer to surface with her.

The last words Deaton says to him are a warning.

They don’t really see each other after that. Deaton says he can’t teach Stiles anything Mary couldn’t. Stiles isn’t sure how he feels about that.

***

They’ve sat for almost an hour somewhere in the Preserve their feet in the Spring’s water when she finally answers him. He thinks she might have thought of never answering and what might have come from that or she had just lost herself in the wind’s play in the water _(fire and earth were always more his, like wind and water were hers)_ but none of that matters now, inconsequential in the face of her answer.

“If you are good and desperate and cunning and old, you will find a way to stop waking.”

His first thought is _he isn’t old_. Then he wonders if she even knows how to answer any of his questions without being cryptic and vague, if maybe it’s a product of the how ever many lifetimes crammed in her head. Maybe she sometimes forgets who she’s talking to and that’s why her answers are what they are.

***

He stared at the screen and then checked the books he had open on his lap. He took one look at the bestiary but it wouldn’t help in this. Deaton had been barely any help _(he’d never thought of breaking the cycle)_ but if Stiles had this right…they would have to take out the whole of the alpha pack at once, with brutal efficiency. Would they? Maybe more importantly, _could_ they? But no, would they? Would they sacrifice any and all possibilities of walking out of this without further bloodshed just for their Alpha's mate’s selfish desires?

***

The woods are quiet, except to the ears of an alpha. There’s breathing, forced quiet and calm surrounding every inhale, and steps, the crinkling of leaves every now and then, and the best clue of all, their heartbeats rabbiting away with adrenaline.

The alphas are all facing one side of the clearing, mocking smiles curling on Kali’s and Aidan’s lips with Ethan grinning viciously. Deucalion stays calm and shows nothing.

There’s the swish of metal cutting through air, Ethan’s howl starts and cuts off within a beat of their hearts and his head rolls to a stop in front of Deucalion’s feet.

Shocked silence for just a moment, even the wind stops and then the sounds of Hale’s pathetic pack are behind them. _(Ethan’s body thumping to the ground in the background)_

And it clicks for Deucalion the moment the blonde woman walks out of the cover of the trees _(and he has to admit to himself there’s something truly disturbing about seeing the woman and being unable to hear or scent her)_. She’s swinging a sword that stinks of wolfsbane and Ethan’s blood and Deucalion snarls.

“Witching Wolf”, he growls and she only gives him what could be described as a coquettish smile.

“Yeah, been knocking about for a while, seen things, done things, _known_ things that make little wannabe-villains weep but you know what’s the fun part here? I mean, the really truly ingenious bit, if I say so myself,” and her voice lowered to a whisper, “I’m not the only one.”

And the pack attacked. Alpha red met goldbluegreenredamber and - -

_the smell of blood in the clearing was overwhelming after the first clash_

_[stop]_ Mary had her teeth buried in Kali’s shoulder while Peter was crashing to a tree, her sword stuck deep in another one

_the howls rending the air to pieces were more pain and rage than victory_

_[stop]_ Isaac was crouching over Boyd and Erica while they healed enough to get back in the game, snarling anytime Aidan came closer

 _he kept repeating it over_ will _and over_ not _and over_ forget

 _[stop]_ Jackson had got himself on Deucalion’s back claws buried deep but was soon sent flying

_and there was magic singing through the air, swirling in a more and more violent tornado around them_

_[stop]_ Aidan had his claws in Scott’s stomach, Derek striking at Deucalion at random while they circled

_and suddenly calm_

Stiles pulled his silver knife from his hoodie pocket, saw Isaac and Scott taking on Aidan, who was bleeding from multiple cuts all over his body, still managing to keep them from doing any real damage. Stiles moved with a calmness he didn’t know he had in him and stuck the knife in between Aidan’s ribs. He only watched long enough to see the black seep from the alpha’s mouth and nose before moving on to Kali who got her neck snapped by Peter just a moment after he’d stuck the knife in and then...the main course. Deucalion.

He wouldn’t be easy.

***

There was a beat of silence after he’d swallowed the last piece and he could see Scott starting to say something and _powersomuchpowermemoriescarnivalsfullmoonssacrificespenancepainandregretandsuchoverwhelming L O V E_ and Stiles was left gasping for breath. That love, it stretched through time and memory of men and there was something infinitely sad in his Wolf Mother’s eyes but he couldn’t handle that, not now when there was still power sparking at his fingertips and Derek _AlphaAlphaAlpha_ needed all that he could give him.

_and StilesJemJeremiahGenim’s hands on TheodericVolyaVladimirDerek’s cheeks and his eyes burnburnburn, almost bleed, red with the power given_

**Author's Note:**

> Jeremiah’s my headcanon name for Stiles and means “Exaltation of the Lord”. Jem’s a pet form. Genim’s there because, well, fandom.
> 
> Theoderic is the original root from which Derek derives and means “people-ruler”. Vladimir is Slavic and means “peaceful ruler”, Volya is a pet form of Vladimir.  
> *  
> Fun fact: I put way too much thought into naming my characters (this includes Mary, which reminds me, I haven’t told you guys her full name).
> 
> Belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, has toxic berries and foliage.
> 
> I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. My other fandoms make surprise spot-the-reference attacks and I find them way too hilarious and/or fitting to edit them away.
> 
> By the way, “Witching Wolf” is meant as a derogatory term. I mean, I can’t speak for all the gammas but Mary at least only finds it amusing and sometimes endearing.
> 
> (wow, that’s random and all over the place o.O)
> 
> (also, also, if I haven’t made it completely clear; ask me ALL the questions if you want :D)
> 
> [edit: *facepalm* why didn't anyone tell me about the "haphazard plaid" which was supposed to be a braid? Seriously, guys, I trust you to tell me these things.]


End file.
